


Truth #2

by Iben



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-20 03:29:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7388746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iben/pseuds/Iben
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is on his own, not sure what the next step will be. He wouldn't say he is lost, but maybe those who are never know it. When he meets up with Maria, he finds there is still a lot of work to be done and also that his own life can take unpredictable turns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains spoilers up to and including Captain America: Civil War.

The sun was beating down from a clear blue sky and there was a warm, salty breeze coming from the sea. Overhead the plaintive cries of seagulls cut through the air. Steve had chosen a table on the promenade that offered a good view of the street in both directions. He was wearing sunglasses and hopefully he gave the appearance of leisurely gazing at people.

The promenade wasn't very crowded. He would have picked another time of day if he'd set the appointment, but this was the time and place he'd received, a cafe in the south of France. Nat's voice had sounded distant over the phone. 

Drops of condensation stained the beer bottle on the table in front of him and when he lifted it to take a swig his fingertips got wet. He wished he could have held the cold bottle to his neck for a second, but he needed to stay alert.

He wondered who would show. He thought probably Natasha, but then maybe not. The two of them had worked closely more than once over the last few years and most likely that had been noticed. Even though she was a master spy and he, well he had grown a beard, they might be glaringly conspicuous to anyone who was looking for them. 

He found himself, unprofessionally, wishing it would be Natasha anyway. She was a friend and he hadn't seen a friendly face in what felt like a long time. 

He spotted her from a fairly good distance. As mentioned, it wasn't crowded and he did have experience doing surveillance. It wasn't Natasha, it was Maria Hill. 

He got up from his seat when she came up to the table. 

“Hi,” she said and smiled, but he could see something else in her eyes; an awareness that told him the smile was, at least in part, only for show.

“Hi.” He smiled back and when she took a seat he sat down again. 

The waiter was there in virtually no time.

“A glass of white wine, please,” Maria said, in near perfect French.

“Drinking on the job?” Steve said. 

“Look whose talking.” She nodded at his beer.

“Alcohol doesn't affect me.”

She smiled, a bit more genuine this time perhaps. Steve wondered to himself why he had made a joke. Relief at seeing someone he knew maybe, an urge to connect. 

Maria was wearing a pale summer dress, a pair of strappy sandals and she had a striped beach bag that she set down on the ground next to the table. He doubted she was armed, at least he hadn't been able to spot it. 

“Is this such a great spot?” he said.

“It's a great spot for a couple of tourists who don't know when and where the local fun is.”

Steve wondered if he could trust her. He hadn't seen anyone else, but that didn't mean that there wasn't a tactical team getting ready to ambush him right now. 

“Did you come alone?” he asked.

Maria looked at him. “Yes.”

It didn't seem like a lie, but she was very good and there was a very big chance he wouldn't be able to tell if it was. 

The waiter showed up with her wine.

“Merci,” she said, then turned to Steve again. “Are you gonna tell me where he is?”

“No.”

She nodded a little. “That was mostly just my own curiosity.”

“Who are you working for these days?”

“Nick.”

“It was always Nick, wasn't it?”

“Don't make it sound like a love affair.” A small frown appeared between her eyebrows.

“Sorry, I didn't mean it like that.”

“Not everybody think that you should be brought in, stand trial...”

“Would there even be a trial?” 

What he had seen so far of how the authorities dealt with so-called enhanced individuals hadn't looked very much like a fair justice system. 

“Probably not, they'd stick you in the Raft, on some national security charge, and then they'd throw away the key.”

Steve acknowledged that with an expression that conveyed he had expected as much. 

“What I'm trying to say is that there are those who still think of you as a hero,” Maria said.

“Does that matter? Being a hero, is that really the issue? What about all those who are just ordinary, good people with special abilities? I have done things that aren't legal...”

“Like breaking into a high-security prison,” Maria said, almost under her breath.

“But what about everyone who hasn't? Punishment is supposed to come after the crime. Innocent until proven guilty.”

“You're preaching to the choir.”

Steve took a deep breath. The frustration was clawing at him, these thoughts going round and round in his head with no one to voice them out loud to. 

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Maria put her hand on top of his on the table and, surprised, Steve turned his gaze to it. He felt the weight of it, small and warm on top of his. 

“This is supposed to convey that I'm your friend,” Maria said. “And it is also our cover.”

“Our cover?” Steve looked at her face again. 

“Yeah.”

“And the plan?”

“We're to wait here. Someone will make contact...”

“Who?”

“Will you let me finish? Not everyone agrees with the Accords. People in government, human rights organizations... We are trying to dig up dirt on Ross, the Secretary of State.”

Steve leaned back in his chair, pulling his hand away from hers in the process. He shook his head, almost smiled.

“That's your great plan?” he said. 

“He is not the protector of innocent lives that he claims to be. His judgment is clouded, he is obsessed with the Super Soldier Serum, he's been part of trying to recreate it more than once, leaving a wreckage and dead bodies in his wake. He has a personal vendetta against the Hulk. If we expose him...”

“He's just one man.”

“But he's the loudest. This isn't a war you can win with strength, Steve. The most important battlefield in this war is going to be the media, public opinion.”

“I've heard that before.” Steve gazed out over the ocean. Sitting idly by while there were wrongs to be righted wasn't his strong suit. It was like an itch under his skin, the restlessness and powerlessness. 

“We need proof and we think we can get them, if our contact comes through.”

“And in the meantime we just wait?”

“You and me, yeah. But we're not the only ones fighting. We're working a lot of angles.”

Steve was quiet for a moment. 

“All right,” he said then. 

“You know, I thought older people were supposed to be a lot more patient.”

He turned his gaze to her again. She was smiling a little.

“Very funny.”

She took a sip of her wine. 

“Where are you staying?” she asked. 

Steve named the hotel where he'd gotten a room. 

“Classy,” was Maria's reply.

“I'm running a little low on cash.”

“I can help with that.”

“Who's financing it all?”

She just gave him a look. She didn't need to say anything. Tony. Steve supposed that was a good thing, a good sign. He had sent Tony a letter, in the hope that things could some day be mended between them, but he hadn't spoken to him. 

He drank some of his beer. 

“Wanna go for a swim?” Maria asked after a little while.

“I didn't bring any swimwear.”

“Good thing I took care of that then.”

Steve looked at her in surprise.

“We're a couple on holiday,” she said, sounding somewhat exasperated. 

“Right.”

Steve finished the last of his beer and then got up from his seat. He reached for his jeans pocket, but Maria was ahead of him.

“I got this,” she said, producing a couple of bills and putting them on the table.

It was a good thing, improved equality between men and women, and he was all for it, but it felt a little weird not paying at restaurants and such things. Not that he ever got a chance to really do that much back in the day, or nowadays for that matter. He'd had to relearn to not open doors and not pull out chairs for women, because it was interpreted as sexist, even though he only meant it as a sign of respect. 

“Thanks,” he said. 

They crossed the street and headed down to the beach. The curved shoreline embraced a blue-green swell of water that rippled ever so slightly. Sun chairs and orange parasols dotted the white sand. Only a few of them were occupied. Maria picked two that were surrounded by several empty ones. 

“Here you go,” she said and took out a towel and a pair of dark blue swimming shorts from her bag. 

Underneath the second towel in the bag was a gun. It looked incongruous and yet Steve wasn't the least bit surprised. Maria rearranged a scarf to cover it. 

He took off his sunglasses and put them on the chair. He couldn't help but to feel a bit self-conscious when he pulled his t-shirt off. He wrapped the towel around his waist before he pulled off his jeans. 

He didn't look but in the corner of his eye he could still see Maria stripping out of her dress. She had a bikini on underneath and was finished much faster than he. 

The sand was warm under the soles of his feet as they walked down towards the water. The thought of going swimming while he was here hadn't even crossed his mind. He couldn't remember the last time he actually swam in the ocean. 

Being here, doing this, it felt weird. He didn't feel comfortable. He figured it might come to feel like a long wait for the contact. 

“It's pretty warm,” Maria said as the water enveloped their feet, curled around their ankles. 

When the water got deep enough Steve dove in. The water was smooth and silky against his skin. He swam a couple of strokes under the surface, before he reemerged. Maria was just a few feet away, her hair slicked back from the water. 

Steve swam some more. He couldn't think of anything to say, anything to talk about. This wasn't swimming for fun. It was part of the job, of their cover. Maria was a colleague and he hardly knew a thing about her. 

He glanced back towards the beach, keeping an eye on her bag and he noticed she did the same. There was no one nearby and no one who seemed to be watching them either. 

After a while they headed back up. Steve pulled his hand over his face, trying to wipe some of the water off. He hadn't quite gotten used to the beard and was almost surprised at the feel of it against his palm. 

They both sat down when they reached the sun chairs. 

“Can you keep your eyes open for a little while?” Maria asked.

“Yeah.”

She lay down on her back in the chair. Steve didn't. There was this strange annoyance in the pit of his stomach, that he couldn't quite define. Anger at being here, at feeling useless. Awkwardness about this whole op. He needed to ask Maria more about it, get more details. 

He glanced at her. She had her eyes closed. She was slim and in very good shape. He felt as if looking at her was something he shouldn't do, so he turned his gaze away again. Despite the changes brought on by the serum, and the fact that he sort of objectively knew he looked good now, he felt far less comfortable being this undressed than she seemed to be. 

“You know,” she said after a while; he was still staring out over the water, occasionally turning his head to look for threats, “you could act your part a little better and head back up to the cafe and buy us something to drink. Maybe something to eat, too.”

When he turned his head she still had her eyes closed. He didn't say anything, just stood up. If she noticed he was in a bad mood, so be it. He saw no reason to hide it. He hated undercover ops. He wasn't any good at them and most of the time it didn't feel productive. This didn't feel productive.

Since he didn't want to walk up to the cafe, even though it was just across the street, wearing nothing but swimming shorts he pulled on his jeans and t-shirt. 

He bought two bottles of water and two plates of mixed cold cuts and fruits. It wouldn't keep him fed for very long, but he figured he could get something else later. 

“Is it all right if I bring it down to the beach?” he asked. 

“Um, yeah. Just please return the plates after.”

“Of course.”

Maria sat up when he returned. 

“Thanks,” she said as she accepted one of the plates and one of the bottles. 

Steve sat back down on his chair and put the plate next to him. Maria was balancing hers on her lap. She had a scar on the lower right side of her abdomen, from an appendix removal, Steve guessed.

“So, how long do you think it'll be before this contact shows up?” he asked.

“I'm not sure, to be honest.”

“And in the meantime we do tourist stuff?”

“You don't have to like it.”

Steve almost laughed a little, but at the same time he felt silly, as if he'd been acting like a petulant child. 

“Listen,” he said, “I'm sorry. It's not fair to take my frustration out on you.”

“Don't worry about it.” 

They spent a few more hours at the beach and Maria told him a bit more about the plan to bring down Ross. Steve was fairly certain she knew a lot more than she told him, about other ops in progress, but he didn't push the matter. There were things he didn't tell her either, like Bucky's location, or that T'Challa had promised them both a home in Wakanda. He especially didn't tell her that if Bucky hadn't asked to be put back into cryo-sleep, Steve might have picked T'Challa up on the offer. He had been ready to put down the shield, both figuratively and literally, and he had never, not truly, felt that way before. 

They went for another swim, but then Steve was starting to get really hungry. 

“Do you want to grab some dinner?” he asked. 

“Sure, but it's a little early, isn't it?”

Steve made a hesitant face. “Yeah, well...”

“Are you hungry?”

He wasn't dying of starvation, but he was pretty hungry. 

“Okay, sure,” Maria said. “Can we just go back to the hotel so I can have a quick shower first?”

“Sure.”

Her hair had almost completely dried in the sun, but it was a little messy and curled around her face. He realized she wasn't wearing any make up. He'd never seen her looking so casual before. It was a good look on her. 

They returned the plates to the cafe and the gratefulness of the staff indicated that most people weren't so thoughtful, then they started walking down the street.

“Where are you staying?” Steve asked.

Maria turned her head to look at him, her expression a mixture of disbelief and amusement. 

“I'm staying where you're staying,” she said, talking a bit more slowly than normal. “In your room.”

“Oh, right.” He felt stupid. “Right.”

She didn't say anything else, no jokes on his expense, for which he felt rather grateful. 

The hotel was built in a U-shape around a small yard that contained a not very clean looking pool and a few dingy deckchairs. The rooms were accessed from galleries that ran the inner length of the building. Steve's room was on the top third floor. He'd picked it because it would be easy to access the roof from there and from the roof you could jump onto the next building or down to the back alley. 

It was a shitty place, but he'd lived in worse and he honestly didn't mind. He wondered what had happened to his apartment back home and his belongings that he so carefully had accumulated while trying to build himself a life again. 

The hotel room wasn't big. It held a bed, a chair and a wardrobe. There was an old TV set in one corner and a hot plate in the other. They'd have to share a bed. Well, there were worse things. Through the window he could see a clothes line stretched between the room below his and the next building. There was a washing machine in the reception. He probably needed to use that soon. 

“I left my suitcase at the train station,” Maria said. “We can go pick it up after dinner.”

She put her finger to her lips, indicating that they shouldn't talk in here. Steve met her gaze and nodded.

“Yeah, sure.”

“You wanna go first?” She indicated the door to the bathroom.

“No, you go ahead.”

They took turns using the bathroom. Steve put on a clean shirt after he had showered.

Out on the street Maria explained that she had equipment to sweep the place for bugs in her suitcase. 

They had dinner at a restaurant nearby, then walked at a leisurely pace to the train station. Maria's suitcase was in a locker in the luggage storage. She tugged it out and set it down on the floor.

“Do you mind?” she asked. “It's pretty heavy.”

Steve didn't mind and it wasn't heavy for him. 

Back at the hotel room she swept for bugs.

“Nothing,” she said. “I didn't think there would be, I doubt anyone knows we're here.”

Steve nodded. “I'm gonna go down to the reception, they have a washing machine there. Do you have anything that needs washing?”

“Not right now.”

The machine was old, but in working condition. Steve dug through his pocket for change to get it started. The washing program took forty minutes and he thumbed through old magazines while he waited. 

He might have called Maria a friend, if anyone would have asked him, but he still felt weird about sharing a bed with her, and also a little annoyed with himself for getting worked up about it. 

He thought about Bucky and his dreamless sleep. At least Steve thought it was dreamless; he, Steve, hadn't had any thoughts that he could remember while he was in the ice. It was just a chunk of time missing from existence and the only reason he knew it was missing was because the world had kept on spinning and changing while he was gone. 

He took his wet clothes back up to the room and hung them over the back of the chair and the door to the wardrobe. Maria was sitting with crossed legs on the bed, a laptop open in front of her. 

“That thing secure?” Steve asked with a nod towards the computer.

“Yeah, but I wouldn't update my facebook status if I were you.” She smiled a little. 

Steve picked up his paperback from the bedside table, and sat down on the bed with his back against the headboard, keeping a decent amount of space between him and Maria. It was quiet a moment.

“Do you have facebook?” she asked then all of a sudden.

Steve chuckled. “No. Do you?”

“No. My sister does and she wants me to get an account, so that I can look at all the photos of her kids and her home projects.”

“You have a sister?”

Maria nodded. She was sitting with her back to him so he could only see the back of her head.

“Older or younger?” he asked.

“Older. Two years.”

“Are you two close?”

“Yeah. I mean, a large part of what I do with my time is classified, so.. but we stay in touch and I visit when I can.”

“That's nice.”

Neither of them said anything for a while. Steve went back to reading. He saw out of the corner of his eye when Maria stifled a yawn, though. 

“Are you tired? You want to go to bed?” he asked.

“I'm okay.” Then she turned her head. “Actually, I'm pretty beat. Too much sun. You can go on reading, though, the light won't bother me.”

The whole situation was bothering him, more than he liked to admit. 

Maria went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and changed into a nightgown. Steve didn't have any pajamas, not that he ordinarily wore them, but right now he wouldn't have minded. He had another t-shirt, so that and his boxers would have to do. 

It didn't feel entirely natural getting in under the cover. He didn't want to read any more so he turned out the lights. 

“Good night,” came Maria's voice in the dark. He thought that at least she, too, sounded a little bit awkward. 

“Good night.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Steve awoke light sifted into the room through the threadbare curtains. He turned his head and saw that Maria was still asleep. Her hair was a dark mess against the white pillow and her mouth was slightly open. 

As kids he and Bucky had sometimes shared a bed when staying over at each other's houses. Bucky would whisper ghost stories to scare him and they'd tickle each other, straining to keep quiet in order to not incur the wrath of the grown ups. 

And that was the extent of his experiences with sharing a bed with someone. He hadn't thought very much about it. It popped up in his mind now and then, along with the rest of his contemplations regarding his loneliness and his strong suspicion that he was exactly as quaint as he felt. 

He wouldn't have minded talking to Bucky about it, at least to some degree. They had talked, if only a little. Bucky had asked him about Sharon and Steve had said that he didn't know, that it didn't seem possible anything would come of it during the circumstances. He liked her, but he barely knew her. 

Steve got out of bed and went into the bathroom. When he had dressed and got back out again Maria had woken up. Well, she was moving, but she barely looked awake. 

“Good morning,” Steve said. 

“Good morning.” She sat up, squinting a little. “I need coffee, and a shower.”

“Well, take a shower and then we can go out for breakfast.”

She grimaced. “You're one of those people who are chipper in the morning?” she said. “I should have guessed.”

Steve smiled a little. He didn't feel particularly chipper. 

When Maria was ready they went to a nearby cafe. It was already warm enough to sit outside. Steve ordered the big breakfast and Maria the medium one. 

“I never used to eat breakfast,” she said after she'd had a sip of her coffee. “I had to learn doing that during my training.”

“Pretty difficult to get through a day of training without eating first,” Steve said, remembering his own training in the army. 

He could still remember what it was like back then, not having the physical strength to do what he wanted, struggling to fill his lungs, knowing in his head what he had to do, what he should do, but his body unable to cooperate. Regardless of whether he'd eaten or not.

Now he could run on fumes for quite long stretches of time, although he rarely did because it wasn't pleasant.

Maria nodded and set down her cup. 

“Did you always want to work in intelligence, the military, that sort of thing?” Steve asked. 

“Not when I was a little girl, but I was always interested in what you'd call male dominated occupations. Fire fighter, pilot, that sort of thing.” She looked at him across the table. “What about you?”

It felt a bit weird being asked that question. His history was so well known by now, no one ever did. 

“I wanted to join the army,” he said, because that was the truth. 

“But before that, when you were little, did you want to be a soldier then too?”

“Yeah. My dad was in the army, so that was always there, a sort of awareness. But you know, I was sick a lot and I liked drawing, and then I went to art school.”

“You didn't have dream jobs, as a kid?”

“It was a very different time, the world was much smaller, or it seemed smaller. We were poor, I lived in a poor neighborhood and most people who were born there, just stayed there. I guess I wanted to be a milkman, once.”

He only just now remembered that.

“A milkman?” Maria smiled.

“Yeah, it was only for, like a week, or so. But he went around the neighborhood, it seemed like a nice job.”

“So you wanted to drive the truck around, talk to people.”

“It was actually a horse and carriage, when I was little.” Steve smiled, aware that it probably sounded ancient.

Maria smiled back. “I like horses.”

After breakfast they spotted a poster on the door to the cafe, announcing that there were guided tours of a nature trail just outside of town. 

“We can go on that,” Maria said.

“You think the contact will show up on a guided tour?”

“I know that we shouldn't look as if we're sitting around waiting for someone to make contact.”

The early tour was starting in just a little over an hour. They found a small store and bought bottles of water, some fruit and a cheap backpack to put them in. Maria slipped the backpack on before Steve had a chance to offer. 

They made their way to the edge of town. The meeting place was between two derelict buildings and Steve automatically scanned the windows and roofs for snipers. 

“Is this where the hike starts? Do you know?” A girl in her early twenties, accompanied by another girl in her early twenties, asked in broken French.

“Yeah, I think so,” Steve replied. 

Other people began to trickle in. Steve and Maria didn't talk, they were too likely to be overheard. Most of the others were their age, well, Maria's age technically, but there were a couple of people who looked older too. 

“You should buy yourself a pair of shorts,” Maria said.

Steve didn't have time to reply, because the tour guide showed up just then. He gave an animated welcome speech that sounded rehearsed. He told them that there were two different trails and today they'd take the hard one, but it was definitely worth the effort because some of the views were simply breathtaking. 

Before they set off he collected payment from each of the participants. Steve handed over a couple of bills for him and Maria. 

“Honeymoon?” the guide asked. “I give discount to honeymooners.”

“No, not honeymoon.” 

Steve didn't turn his head to see if Maria was smiling.

Then they started the hike. It was beautiful out here; unspoiled countryside, aside from the trail they followed. It was a steady uphill climb and then the ground leveled away for a bit before the next ascent. The air smelled of sun-warmed earth and greenery.

When they reached a steep downhill slope, Steve, who was ahead of Maria on the narrow trail, climbed down first. After he'd made it down she held out her hand to him. 

There wasn't a doubt in his mind that she could have made it down easily herself, but she was acting her part, mimicking what the other couples on the hike had done. He took her hand and then when she was about halfway he lifted her down the rest of the way.

“Thank you,” she said. She met his gaze, a somewhat amused look in her eyes. 

They waited for the rest of the group to climb down the slope.

“This, my friends,” the guide said when they were all gathered again, “is our first pit stop. Drink some water, admire the view.”

Steve took one of the water bottles from the backpack and handed it to Maria. She drank some and then handed it back to him. The water was warm, but it felt good with a drink anyway. 

“Make sure you don't end up in the background of someone's selfie,” Maria said in a low voice.

“Yeah.”

The two girls in their twenties were throwing glances in their direction. Steve noticed it and apparently so had Maria, because she said:

“I don't think they recognize you,” she said. “They're just... admiring the view.”

Steve got embarrassed. Maria glanced at him. 

“I don't blame them,” she said, which made him even more embarrassed.

He cleared his throat, unsure what to say and Maria smiled. Finally he smiled back and shook his head a little. 

After a while they continued up the trail. Steve walked behind Maria this time and it was impossible for him to not look at her legs and backside. They were right in his face. She was wearing shorts and a tank top. She had very nice legs. 

At the top of the hill, or maybe it qualified as a mountain, were the ruins of a convent that had been built here hundreds of years ago. All that remained now were the big blocks of stone that had made up the foundation and part of the cellar. The guide talked about the monks that had lived here. Steve put his hand on one of the rocks, felt the echoes of history. 

The view from here was spectacular. You could see as far as the horizon in almost every direction and to the south was the wide, blue expanse of the ocean. 

“Come on, selfie-time,” Maria said. 

Everybody else was doing it, so they should too. She got her phone out of her pocket and Steve had to lean down a little in order to put his face next to hers. He could feel the heat of her body and a faint smell of fresh sweat. 

She snapped a picture.

“Please tell me you're not going to send that to Fury,” Steve said.

She laughed. “I wasn't planning to. I'm making it the background on my phone, though.” She angled her phone so that he could see. His own smile in the photo looked strange and goofy.

He gazed out at the view, squinting a little in the sun. This would probably have been really nice under different circumstances. He thought about his friends, people he cared about, Sam, Clint, Scott and Wanda, on the run and in hiding. Maybe Maria was a lot better than he was at compartmentalizing. 

After the hike they went back to the hotel and showered and changed. They had lunch and then they strolled through town, looking in shop windows. Steve bought some more clothes. 

He had never spent a great amount of time with Maria. He'd worked with her, he'd had conversations about threat scenarios and strategies with her, but outside the office, so to speak, he'd only seen her at maybe two, possibly three different occasions, and he'd never been alone with her. 

If he had thought about it, which he hadn't, he might have expected her to be a bit like Nat. She wasn't. Sure, they were both highly skilled professionals, in a very male dominated field of work, but Maria had a different air about her. He didn't want to use the word ordinary, because it had a negative connotation, but she seemed grounded in a whole different way. She was guarded, which was understandable given their job, but he'd gotten a few glimpses of her private self since yesterday and it felt genuine. 

In a market set up in a square Steve stopped and looked at a table stacked with second hand books. Most were in French, which he could read, but there were some in English too. 

“Steve.”

He turned around. Maria was at the stall behind him, wearing a pair of ridiculous sunglasses. Huge and sparkly purple.

“Should I get these?” she said. 

He smiled. “Go for it.”

She smiled back, a wide, pretty smile. He thought he rather liked her private self. He bought two paperbacks. 

They had dinner at another restaurant than yesterday. They both had red wine with their food. In the middle of the meal Maria got a text.

“Any news?” Steve asked.

She frowned at her phone for a second. “Just that the contact seems to have gotten spooked. We might be here a while.” She put her phone away. “Are you okay with that?”

“I guess I'll have to be.” That might have come out rude and he backtracked. “I don't mind being here with you...”

Maria raised her eyebrows. “Go on,” she said, “I'm quite looking forward to you digging your own grave starting with that line.”

Steve smiled. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do.”

**

The next morning, after breakfast, they went down to the beach. It wasn't very crowded today either. Steve could sort of see why, the sun chairs and the various establishment lining the street were all a little worse for wear. This wasn't the touristy part of town, this was where a lot of the locals lived. He'd already noticed that the hotel where they were staying had a couple of permanent residents. 

Maria put sunscreen on her chest and shoulders.

“Will you help me with my back?” she asked. 

Steve did and tried not to think about how it felt a little strange, a little too intimate, to touch her. Her back was narrow and her skin was smooth under his hands. 

“Thanks,” she said and put the bottle back in her bag. 

She lay down on her back. Since she had her eyes closed Steve could steal a glance or two at her. She was so perfect that he found he liked that small scar she had. 

He looked out over the water. In the back of his mind he could hear Zemo's comment about how nice it was to find a flaw. Steve didn't think of himself as perfect. Did people in general think that he did? 

When the sun began to burn too hot they went into the water. Maria told him that she had been on her school's swim team when she was a teenager. 

“I was never great at it, though,” she said. 

“Can I ask you how old you are? I know it's rude, but...”

She smiled. “I'm thirty-three.”

They swam a bit further out, until Steve could no longer feel the bottom with his feet, then back until he could again. The shoulder strap on Maria's bikini had slipped off her shoulder and he reached out and pulled it back up again. 

“Thanks.” She smiled a little and he felt foolish. He could just as well have simply told her, but he didn't think, he just didn't want her to come out of the water not knowing her bikini top was halfway off.

They lounged in the sun. Maria was lying on her belly and reached back and undid the clasp on her bikini top. Steve had brought one of the books he bought yesterday. After a while, when he turned his head to see if she had fallen asleep, he noticed she was looking at him. She blinked and turned her eyes away, but then she met his gaze again and smiled. 

“Sorry, I didn't mean to stare,” she said. 

“Um... that's all right.” He didn't know what else to say. He felt a swooping sensation in his belly when he held her gaze. 

This wasn't keeping up their cover. There was no one there, no one nearby, to observe them. 

Then the moment passed. She moved, put her bikini back on proper and sat up. 

“I'll go get us something to drink,” she said.

Steve nodded, doing his best to look composed. When she had left he could have groaned. What was wrong with him? This was not the time, nor the place. 

He felt awkward around her throughout the rest of that day. Maybe she was trying a little too hard to be crisp and professional as well. He needed to get some time to himself, get his head screwed on right again, but short of just dumping her some place and take off he couldn't see how he'd manage that. 

It felt even weirder going to bed that night. It didn't make things less weird that he woke up with an erection. He glanced over his shoulder. She seemed to be asleep. 

In the bathroom he jerked off, trying to be quick about it, then he put on his running gear and headed out. He had to keep a slow pace, in order to not be conspicuous. It was irritating, since it meant the run didn't do half as much for clearing his mind as he had hoped. 

He wasn't actually interested in Maria, was he? She was a friend. A friendly face. He worked with her, for Christ's sake! Besides, right now he didn't have the luxury to be interested in anyone. 

When he got back to the hotel room she was up and dressed, sitting on the bed with her computer. She looked up from the screen when he came into the room. 

“I waited for you, if you want to go get some breakfast? If you haven't eaten already?”

“No. Not yet.” He wasn't sure how to interpret what she had just said. She had waited for him because she wanted his company? Or to point out that he'd acted childish just now, taking off without letting her now where? Or maybe he was over-analyzing the whole thing. “Let me just take a shower.”

They went back to the same cafe as the previous mornings. They served a good breakfast there. Steve wished he hadn't noticed how incredibly beautiful she looked, sitting across the table from him. She wasn't wearing any make up, which he by now had figured out meant she planned on swimming later, and her dark hair fell down to her shoulders. 

She looked up from her food and caught him staring. There was really no point in feeling embarrassed. Well, maybe he felt a little embarrassed, but mainly he just went back to focusing on his breakfast. 

They went down to the beach a little later. Maria wanted to sunbathe first so Steve went into the water by himself. He swam for a while. He didn't even know her, he told himself. Only bits and pieces, random fragments. Except he knew she was loyal, exceedingly so, and he admired her for it. 

She squinted up at him from where she was lying on the sun chair when he got back up. As far as undercover ops went, this was a terrible one. They were half-undressed most of the time. 

“Listen, maybe we should...” He didn't finish the sentence. Not spend so much time at the beach? He couldn't say that, it would be tantamount to saying 'I find seeing you in a bikini very distracting'.

He sat down. 

“When you're not wanted by the law anymore, have you thought about what you want to do?” Maria asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to go back to being Captain America?”

“I don't know.”

He'd had a similar conversation with Sam once. Truth was he had no idea what he would do instead. 

“Have you ever thought about doing something else?” he asked.

She sat up. “Yeah, from time to time. I've thought about what I'd like to do after.”

“After?”

She looked at him. “For most people there comes a time when you have to stop being an operative. I guess it's different for you.”

Since he had received the serum he hadn't noticeably aged. He couldn't see any change when he looked in the mirror and whatever tests had been run on him couldn't detect any changes either. That wasn't a side effect he felt very comfortable with. He didn't want to think about outliving everyone he'd ever known, again. 

“I'm gonna have a plunge,” Maria said after a few seconds and stood up. 

Steve watched her go. He thought about Peggy and with the thoughts came that familiar stab of grief and regret. Maria was a bit slimmer than Peggy, but... did he have a type? Sharon was Peggy's niece, which was admittedly rather strange, but he didn't know that when he first met her. 

Maybe it was an altogether pathetic line of thought. Bucky, or Sam, or Nat might have laughed at him if he'd told either of them. The simplest answer was probably that the only women he ever met, and talked to for any longer than two seconds, were in the same line of work as he was. He didn't have a type, he had colleagues. 

“I'm getting restless,” Maria said when she came back, drops of water clinging to her legs. 

“Me too.”

“I'm up for another hike, or something. Anything.”

Steve got his phone out from the pocket of his jeans – it was another gift from T'Challa, a Wakandan brand, completely unhackable – and started looking up sights and things to do around here. 

They rented a car. Steve wondered if anyone was looking at the transactions, keeping track of their holiday expenses, and in extent them. Probably. 

There was a medieval town not too far away and they went there. Growing up in the States meant Steve hadn't seen many place this old. It was fascinating. They had a look around, had a late lunch or very early dinner, depending on your definition.

“Can you take a picture of me here?” Maria asked, standing next to an elaborately carved door, surrounded by roses in full bloom. She handed him her phone.

For a second he wondered if this was part of the act or not. But the only people around were tourists, most of them senior citizens who weren't paying them any attention whatsoever, and he figured she genuinely wanted the photo. 

He took the photo. She looked lovely.

“Thanks,” she said when he gave her the phone back. 

The town was surrounded by a tall stone wall and tourists were allowed up there. They walked the length of it, a gentle breeze from the ocean washing over them, then stopped at one of the watch towers and looked out over the water. 

The sun had begun to sink lower in the sky and the world was tinted a golden hue. Steve glanced at Maria. His throat felt dry at the sight of her, here, now, like this, in this moment. He wanted to kiss her. When she turned her head and looked at him, he did. 

Her lips felt warm and soft. He felt her hand against his neck. When they stopped she kept it there and he still had his arms around here. He smiled a little and she smiled back.

“This is probably very unprofessional,” he said. He knew it was. It was insane. 

“Yeah.”

She got up on her tiptoes and kissed him again. He didn't care that it was insane, at least not right now. 

She stroked his cheek. “I quite like the beard,” she said and he laughed. “We should head back.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”


	3. Chapter 3

The next day it rained. Not a light drizzle – it absolutely poured down. Steve went for a run anyway; he wouldn't melt because of a bit of rain. He changed before they went out to have breakfast and when they made it back to the hotel he was drenched all over again. 

They took turns drying off and getting changed in the bathroom. Steve read for a bit and Maria was on her computer, until she put that away and picked up a book Steve had already read.

He found it difficult to concentrate. His thoughts kept going back to the kiss at the top of the watch tower, again and again. Aside from the steady patter against the window it was quiet. 

He wasn't surprised when Maria put the book down and moved closer to him on the bed. Well, a little surprised maybe, it wasn't something he'd been counting on to happen, but he couldn't deny he was happy it did. He put his book down too and slid his arms around her as they kissed some more. More than yesterday. 

She felt small and fragile in his arms, surprisingly so, he'd seen what she could do. She had her arms around him too.

He felt a pang of guilt. It really wasn't that long ago that he had kissed Sharon. He had feelings, of some kind, for her. But maybe he did for Maria, too? And it felt so nice. He had let whatever chances he'd had, such as they were, slip right through his fingers. He'd waited too long. He didn't want to make the same mistake again. 

His mind was spinning. Her mouth on his, her tongue, the smell of her skin. He was getting hard. He really hadn't kissed all that many people in his life, he wasn't sure he was very good at it, he probably wasn't. But then her hands were under his shirt, sliding up his back. That felt really good too.

She pulled at him so that he rolled on top of her. He landed a little heavily on her, before he got his weight onto his elbows.

“Don't crush me,” she said.

“Sorry.”

She smiled, slid her hands down his back and then up again. 

“Do you want to take all your clothes off?” she said. “And I'll take off mine?”

He laughed a little. Surprised himself by doing that actually. He'd figured he'd feel more self-conscious. He did feel a bit self-conscious. He had to tell her. 

“I've never actually... slept with anyone.”

“Really?” 

At least she wasn't laughing. 

“Do you want to?” she said. “I'll show you how.”

She smiled at him and he smiled back, feeling a little shy. Then he nodded. 

“Yeah,” he said. 

In a way it was very undramatic. They did take off all of their clothes.

“I'm on the pill,” Maria said. So they didn't need to worry about protection. He couldn't get sick and couldn't pass anything on to her either. 

She gave him a few directions on how to touch her, and they touched each other, and then he slid inside her. It felt great. 

Afterwards they lay side by side. Steve turned his head and looked at her.

“Was that okay?” he asked. 

She turned her head too and smiled. “Yeah.”

“You'd tell me if it wasn't, right?”

“Don't worry. It was good.” She rolled over onto her side, put her hand on his chest and gently stroked his skin. “You're very lovely.”

He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It sounded kind of like a good thing. 

**

They had another two weeks of lazy days in the sun. At night, or in the mornings, and once in the middle of the day when they went back to the hotel room pretty much for that sole purpose, they slept together again. 

“I'm not gonna break,” Maria told him. “You don't have to be quite so careful with me.”

The truth was he had been a bit worried that he might hurt her. 

As much as he knew this was a very bad idea, that the timing was terrible, he loved being here with her. And he loved sleeping with her. Maybe he got a little better at it? He was so surprised the first time she had an orgasm that he stared at her, he didn't know what he'd done to bring that on, but the upside was that he got to watch her and she looked amazing. 

He was falling in love with her. 

And then their contact showed up. 

“She's here,” Maria said, looking up from her phone.

They were at the hotel. Steve had just taken a shower and was getting dressed. Maria was sitting on the bed, still naked. 

Steve pulled his t-shirt over his head. 

“Do we know the exact location?” he asked.

“No, not yet.”

“How much do we know about this person?”

Maria got up from the bed. “I need to take a shower. Back in a sec.”

The mood had shifted. Steve could feel it. It was good, it was necessary, it was what they had been waiting for, but a small part of him couldn't help but to feel disappointed. 

When Maria got back from her shower she began to put on her clothes. 

“What's the threat scenario?” Steve asked.

“Unless she's been followed, minimal.”

“Are you sure? How can you be sure?”

“Because I know who it is.”

Steve looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

“You know who it is?” he said. “And you didn't feel obliged to tell me before?”

“No.”

This was exactly the kind of crap Nick Fury pulled. Steve had a lot of respect for him, he even liked him, but he didn't like all of the secretiveness. Every time Maria had mentioned their contact she'd sounded as if she had no idea who it was. 

“So we're back to that?” he said. 

Maria threw her hands up. “I didn't want to risk exposing her, unless she could deliver.”

Steve wasn't going to go in blind. “Who is it?”

Maria looked at him and he held her gaze. 

“Ross' daughter,” she said finally.

Steve was a little taken aback. He'd thought it would be someone in Ross' office, someone who wanted to usurp him perhaps, or someone from the competition. 

“His own daughter?” he said. “How bad is the stuff she has on him?”

“Pretty bad, we think.”

“And she's willing to hand it over?”

“Their relationship isn't the greatest.”

“Which I'm sure you've played beautifully.”

“Can you drop the holier than thou act for one fucking second? You think you're so much better than me?”

Steve wasn't prepared for that turn in the discussion. 

“No...” he began, but Maria interrupted.

“Forget it.”

She began to forcefully throw things into her bag.

“I've never said, or thought... Why are you so angry?”

“I'm angry because this is really important, so many people's lives are at stake, and I'm counting on you to have my back and be professional, and I've fucked it all up! I've risked everything! I can't do this...”

She had tears in her eyes, tears of anger most likely, because she was staring furiously at him. 

“I'll always have your back,” Steve said after a moment. “No matter what.”

So this was the end. In a way he had maybe expected it would be. Maria wiped away her tears and didn't quite look at him. 

“Come here,” he said and reached for her, even though he wasn't sure if she'd let him, but she did and he hugged her. 

“I'm sorry,” she said, her face against his shoulder.

“Me too.”

They packed their essentials in one bag and then they waited. There was nothing else they could do.

“Who is she communicating through?” Steve asked.

It was apparent that Maria didn't have direct contact with Ross' daughter, Betty. 

“Banner.”

Steve felt the surprised look on his face. “Banner?”

“Yeah. They knew each other. No one ever told you this?”

“No.”

“They were involved when Bruce had his accident. Ross was head of the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project, where they tried to recreate the serum used on you.”

Steve nodded a little. He'd heard of Bruce's work of course, which had been about trying to recreate the Super Soldier Serum, and he was very familiar with the resulting Hulk. Bruce's personal life, however, had never really come up. He was a lonely man, anyone could see that. As far as Steve knew it had never worked out between him and Natasha either. 

Perhaps mixing work and personal life wasn't such a great idea.

He looked at Maria. He'd miss her. He missed her already. Maybe when this was all over... But now wasn't the time to discuss it. 

He checked his phone. He didn't have any messages. While his phone was unhackable, not everybody else's were. He'd had very little contact with anybody, none outside of the strictly necessary. Sam was the closest friend he had, not counting Bucky who wasn't going to send any texts any time soon, and he missed him. 

Maria's phone buzzed.

“I have the location,” she said. 

The plan was simple. Maria would meet with Betty at a cafe. Woman to woman would ease the transaction, was the underlying thought. Steve would wait in the background and be on the lookout. 

They left the hotel. It felt a little strange and a little sad to leave things behind, not to mention wasteful, but they had to travel light.

Steve saw how he'd let himself be lulled into a false sense of security over the last couple of weeks. It was apparent in contrast to how he felt and how he treated his surroundings now. 

Maybe he had needed a break. Maybe he had wanted it, and took it. 

They were still trying to blend in, though. They moved as if they weren't in any hurry. Maria had a shoulder holster under her jacket and another gun strapped to her thigh underneath her dress, which was the only reason she was wearing a dress at all. Steve had one concealed under his jacket too, and a knife in his boot. 

There were no unusual movements or suspect individuals in or around the open-air cafe. Steve didn't need Maria to point out Betty to him, he could easily pick her out where she was sitting by herself by one of the tables. It wasn't the fact that she was alone, so were several other people, it was the way she held herself, there was an air of nervousness about her. 

Steve hung back as Maria approached the cafe. He didn't have time to study Betty closely, he had to keep watch over the street, but he could see that she had dark hair and she was wearing a pink blouse.

Maria had reached the table, she sat down. He couldn't hear what they were saying. Even though Maria had managed to get hold of a lot of tech, through various channels, a comm system wasn't one of them. 

He saw the man the instant he started moving towards the cafe. He was wearing ordinary clothes, but the way he broke off from the stream of people strolling down the street stood out. Steve started running. There were more men moving towards the cafe, a standard formation, and when they spotted him they started running too. 

Maria had seen them. She got up from her seat, while simultaneously pushing Betty down, and crouched behind the table.

Steve pulled his gun and hit one of the guys in the chest. At the loud crack people started screaming. Steve aimed at the next guy who was closest to reaching the table where Maria and Betty were, but someone got in the way and at the last minute he didn't pull the trigger. Maria got the guy instead.

Then Steve was at the table. 

“She's got to come with us,” Maria said and Steve nodded. 

People were screaming and running in all directions. Steve knocked one of the attackers away and he crashed backwards into a table. 

Maria pulled Betty along, shielding her by placing herself between her and the attackers, her gun raised. Steve swung his fist into the face of another guy, grabbed the gun and wrung it out of the hand of a third guy, kicked him in the chest, then pulled his knife out of his boot. 

It was just one team, the difficulty was all the civilians that were in the way. And pretty soon the police would be here. No doubt someone had called them and if gunshots had been reported they'd make haste. 

“Let's go,” Steve said when the last man was down. 

They ran. Betty couldn't run very fast, and neither she nor Maria could run as fast as Steve, but they didn't have to run very far. The car, a rental, was parked nearby. 

Steve got in behind the wheel, since Maria still had her weapon drawn and was ready to lay down covering fire. She and Betty got into the backseat. 

He drove fast out of town. Every now and then he looked in the rear-view mirror, but he didn't see any pursuers. 

Betty was sobbing.

“Hey, it's going to be okay.” Maria's voice was soft, softer than he had ever heard her speak before. He met her gaze in the mirror for a second. 

Aside from Maria trying to comfort Betty in a low voice in the backseat it felt quiet. The calm after a storm, in a way. The road was clear, very little traffic, and they were about forty minutes away from the rendezvous point. 

Steve had time to think. He thought about what this might mean for Betty, what they had pulled her into, possibly making her a fugitive too. And he thought about who had sent the tac-team. Ross? The way they had moved in, the guy Steve had shot had gone for his weapon, it looked as if they'd been ready to kill rather than capture. He couldn't be sure, though, the objective might have been to shoot Maria, and capture Betty. 

And if you'd been forced to make a choice, saving just one of them, came a small voice in the back of his mind. His goal should have been to protect the civilian target. Maria was, for all intents and purposes, a soldier who had signed up for this, who knew the dangers and was willing to risk her life. 

He hadn't had to make a choice. They'd gotten out of there, all three, in one piece. But he knew this was one of the things Maria had gotten upset about. 

He turned off the main road and onto a smaller one, running through fields of green crops. The GPS in his phone had told him to, but he'd memorized the route as well, just in case. 

The jet was in a field surrounded by forest, but it wasn't exactly a well-hidden spot. It had probably landed only a short while ago. Steve knew for a fact that it would have left here in about an hour, whether they were on it or not. He was glad they didn't have to use escape route B. If it had been just him and Maria it would have been all right, but with Betty along it would have been a lot less safe. She wasn't a spy or a soldier, she was a teacher at a university, Maria had told him that too.

The left the car and boarded the jet.

“Hey, guys.”

Clint was behind the, figurative, wheel. Steve smiled when he saw him. 

As soon as the jet was in the air, Maria wanted to check Betty for injuries. 

“I'm fine,” Steve heard Betty say. 

“What about you?”

Steve turned his head. Maria was looking at him. 

“I'm fine. You?”

“I'm good.”

It was just hours ago that he'd been inside her. It felt strange to think about that now. 

“Well, they sure didn't count on you being there,” she said. “Or they wouldn't have sent just one team.”

“I haven't even said thank you,” Betty said and got up from her seat. “I'm sorry, it was just...” She held out her hand to Steve. “Thank you.”

“You don't have to thank me,” he said and shook it. “I should be thanking you.”

She smiled a little sadly. “I'm Betty Ross.”

“Steve Rogers.”

She looked kind. Like a kind, ordinary person. 

“So, who do we think sent those guys?” Maria said. 

“Ross,” Steve said. He'd given it some more thought. Then he caught himself and turned to Betty. “Sorry...”

“No, it's all right. You are probably right.”

“I'm thinking it wasn't an entirely above-board operation,” Maria said. 

“They must have followed me,” Betty said.

“Probably, because they didn't know who you were meeting,” Maria replied. 

“Not above-board is good,” Clint said. “It means they've got something to hide, it means they're starting to get nervous.”

He shot Steve a glance a short while later. Steve had taken a seat near the cockpit. 

“So, Cap, how have you been?”

Steve took a breath, not sure how to reply at first.

“Okay,” he said. 

“Barnes is safe and sound?”

Steve nodded. “What about you?”

“I'm good.”

“Out of retirement?”

“Only when my friends need a ride.”

Steve smiled. “Appreciate it.”

He thought about Clint's house on the countryside and his family. Steve had been there once. At one point in his life he had wanted all that, a family, stability. Now he wasn't so sure. His life was never going to be normal and maybe he was starting to come to terms with that. He didn't want to whine, he had signed up for this, for becoming something other than what he had been. Bucky never got that choice, what he'd been through had been done to him, without his consent. 

Steve didn't want to be alone, though. He knew that much.


	4. Chapter 4

They landed outside an abandoned research facility. 

“Is this Tony's?” Steve asked, looking out the windshield at the large structure tucked away up here in the mountains.

“Used to be,” Clint said. “Now, technically, I own it.” He smiled. “Via a number of dummy corporation. It's all very high-end.”

“I thought you said you were only the cab service?”

“Well...” Clint swung around and got out of the pilot's seat. “I was trying to be modest.”

They stepped out of the jet and just like that Steve was back on American soil. This was the longest period of time that he'd been away since the war. There was perhaps a faint sense of homecoming. What he'd come to realize though, over the last few months, was that 'home' was, more than anything else, asleep in Wakanda. 

They were greeted by some of familiar faces when they got inside. Nat smiled and gave him a hug. 

“It's good to see you,” she said.

“You too,” Steve replied and he truly meant it. 

Nick Fury extended his hand. “Cap,” he said. 

“Thanks for the ride.”

“I'm not even gonna bother to ask where you stashed him.”

It was a funny way of putting it and Steve wondered if Nick maybe had an inkling Bucky had gone back into cryo-sleep, and if he did, how on earth he knew about it.

Bruce was there too. He smiled at Steve, but then there was the awkward reunion between him and Betty. It didn't feel like something they should all be watching. Steve got the sense they hadn't seen each other in a long while, perhaps only communicated via phone. 

“Is anybody else hungry?” Maria said. 

It was a large facility and as such it had a large kitchen. It was obvious that only a small portion of it was being used. 

“Has anyone talked to Sam?” Steve asked.

“He's all right,” Nat said. “He's doing surveillance work.”

“I bet he's loving that,” Steve said and she smiled. 

Steve glanced at Maria and she met his gaze for a short second. 

They talked shop at the table. The hard-drive Betty had brought them was being decrypted as they spoke. They discussed their next move, different possibilities and their possible outcomes. 

“At some point you're gonna have to make a speech to the nation,” Nick said to Steve. 

Steve nodded a little. 

“Whether you like it or not, you're really the only one of us that can style yourself a 'symbol to the nation'.”

“Yeah, well, let's make sure we have their attention first.”

When they had eaten they went into a conference room where a big screen was mounted on one wall. There was a lot of data, some of it nasty and some of it worse, most of it they could use. It did show Ross in a very different light than the one he liked to present himself in. Steve thought of HYDRA and their experiments, he thought of power hungry men who would stop at nothing, no matter who they stepped on.

But would it be enough? Steve wasn't sure how much of an effect it would have on the Accords if they forced the Secretary of State out of office. It would be a backlash, sure, and a lot of people who had put their faith in Ross and his ideas might get second thoughts. 

But the real problem was fear, fear of the unknown, and it wasn't just one man who was responsible for that. Hell, Steve had to own at least some of that responsibility himself. The work he'd done, during the war, for S.H.I.E.L.D., taking down S.H.I.E.L.D., with the Avengers, if you looked at it from the outside, or sometimes even from the inside, that was a lot of wreckage, a lot of people getting hurt. 

He'd thought a lot about that. He'd been forced to think a lot about that. Maria had put it wisely, offered a different perspective, that maybe Steve didn't have. She listened to her sister sometimes and her sister was just scared. Enhanced individuals sounded scary when you thought about what they could do, and you didn't think it could be your neighbor or the woman working at the supermarket because they were regular people. And at the same time it could be either one of them, and that was even more scary.

“It's gonna take some time to sift through all this,” Nick said. 

“Yay,” Maria said in an underwhelmed tone of voice.

Steve smiled a little. 

“I need to be off,” Nick said. “Keep me updated.”

Steve wasn't tired, exactly, he just had a lot of things running through his head right now. He'd seen on a sign by the elevators that there was a gym in the basement and when the meeting was adjourned, for now, he headed there. 

He found some clothes in a closet. Sweatpants and t-shirts with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo printed on them. The idea that someone must have stolen these and then brought them here was a little mind-blowing. He couldn't imagine that they were still being issued, considering the current state of S.H.I.E.L.D. 

Nat cornered him when he stepped out of the dressing room. 

“You can't hide from me,” she said. 

“What?”

Nat did that slight raise of one eye-brow that was her specialty.

“What's going on with you and Maria?”

The question made Steve's face feel a bit warm. He didn't reply, but his face probably told it all, because Nat's eyes widened a little.

“Really?” Nat said. “Something's actually happened? As in, it already has?”

Steve pushed past her. 

“As in, it's already over,” he said. There was no point in lying to her, she had it all figured out anyway. What bothered him, though, was that if it was that glaringly obvious to her, it probably was to Nick as well. Exactly why that bothered him was a tad more tricky to say, except it felt almost like what he imagined it might feel like if Nick had been Maria's father. 

Nat followed him into the gym.

“Why is it over?” she asked. 

“I really don't want to talk about it.”

She looked at him for a second. “All right. Let me know if you change your mind.”

Steve started taking stock of the weights available. 

“Do you want me to spot for you?” Nat said and he smiled.

The facility was isolated, surrounded by miles of thick forest. The people who used to work here had to stay here for some stretches of time and for that purpose there were a number of sleeping accommodations. The rooms were small, two beds in each, but since they weren't that many people here, Steve got a room to himself. The impersonal, practical look of it reminded him of an army base. 

He went to bed alone for the first time in more than a fortnight. He lay awake in the narrow bed and tried to make sense of the ache in his chest. Should it really hurt this much? 

He wondered if Nat would talk to Maria. They were friendly, at least as far as Steve knew. But he didn't know anything. Perhaps that was his defining trait. 

He woke up early the next morning and went for a run. When he got back he took a shower and dressed. The kitchen was empty save for one person; Bruce was sitting by the table, a cup of coffee in front of him, staring out the window. He turned his head when he heard Steve.

“There's more in the pot, if you want some,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Steve poured himself some coffee and took out breakfast things from the fridge, then he brought it over to the table.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.” Bruce looked at Steve's breakfast. “That's a healthy appetite.”

Steve smiled and got a small smile in return. 

“How are you?” Steve asked then. They hadn't really gotten a chance to talk yesterday. 

Bruce made a kind of non-committal face. He took a sip of his coffee, then smiled a little.

“I'm okay,” he said. “It's been some intense weeks. This whole being on the run from the authorities isn't entirely new for me, though.”

Steve smiled a little. 

“It takes some getting used to,” he said. “But hopefully it won't last forever.”

Bruce didn't reply. 

“How are you?” Bruce asked after a moment. 

Steve found himself making a non-committal face, similar to the one Bruce had done earlier. 

“Like you said, it's been some intense weeks.”

Or rather months. The last couple of weeks had actually been very quiet in comparison, and at the same time intense in a whole different way. Steve thought about Maria. He wanted to talk to her, to say what he wasn't exactly sure. Give me a chance? 

He would have liked to talk to Sam, or Bucky. He'd asked Howard's advice once. In Steve's mind Howard knew all about women, in contrast to Steve who knew nothing, but most of all he'd been a friend. 

He glanced at Bruce.

“Can I ask your advice?”

Bruce looked up from his coffee cup. “Of course.”

“There's someone I care about,” Steve said, “but I'm not sure if she feels the same way. And now... with everything that's going on...”

It was quiet for a beat.

“I think that if there is a chance,” Bruce said then, “a possibility that you can be together, you should at least give it a try.” 

“I just...” Steve wasn't sure what to say.

Bruce looked at him. “Forgive me for being blunt, and I might be misinformed since it's not any of my business, but didn't you do exactly this once before?”

Steve looked up from the salt shaker he'd been staring at. Bruce made an apologetic face. 

“You said it yourself once,” he said. “Don't wait too long.”

Hearing him say it made it so very clear. Steve was about to make the exact same mistake again. Waiting for things to calm down, when they might never calm down. Being too scared to actually tell her how he felt. 

“Yeah,” he said. 

When everybody else awoke it turned into a busy day. There was still a lot of information in the files Betty had brought to look through. Steve wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about all the trouble people had gone to in order to recreate what had been done to him, and the bloodshed and ruined lives it left in its wake. 

“Clint, what did I tell you about re-decorating? Look at this place.”

The familiar voice made Steve look up from his computer screen. He'd been slouching, his chin resting in his hand while he read through pages and pages of information, among other things The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Now he straightened. Tony was just a few feet away. The last time they'd seen each other they had come close to killing each other. Desperation and hurt like that didn't just go away without leaving traces. 

Tony turned his head and their gazes met. 

“Cap,” he said. His tone of voice was almost his usual, laid-back jabber. Almost. 

It felt as if the whole room was holding their breaths. Steve got up from his seat. 

“How have you been?” he asked. 

“Oh, you know, business as usual. I'm a double agent now, did you know?”

Steve nodded a little. “I heard something about that.” 

He wanted to convey how sorry he was, how he never wanted things to go the way they did. 

“So, you've got some stuff to show me?” Tony said, addressing Steve and then the whole room. “I hope it's good.”

Tony was, as he had said, acting as a double agent, keeping Ross at bay, pretending to play his game. It allowed him free movement, among other things. It had to be at least at hard, if not harder, than being outside the law. Steve had never been good at being undercover. Just look at his last cover, he managed to turn that into actuality.

He wanted to talk to Maria, every time he saw her something in his chest clenched, but they were busy and he didn't know what to say. 

Putting it off didn't help, though. The worst that could happen would be that she said no, she didn't want him, this, it, whatever it was. But somehow that outcome seemed like it would hurt pretty bad. 

He went to find her that evening. He didn't know exactly which room she was in, but he had a general idea of where it was. The first door he knocked on didn't belong to her. 

Betty opened the door and looked up at him with a mildly surprised look on her face.

“Sorry, I thought... Do you know which room Maria is staying in?”

“The next one.”

“Right. Sorry to disturb you.”

She smiled and he smiled back before knocking on the next door. Maria didn't look surprised to see him. He would have described her expression rather as a bit wary, perhaps. 

“Can I come in?”

She nodded and stepped to the side to let him in. Her room was identical to the one he was staying in. She used the spare bed to keep her things on, her computer and a few piles of neatly folded clothes. Steve moved some of them out of the way, before he sat down. Maria sat down on the other bed. 

He still didn't know what to say. This was new to him. 

“I miss you,” he said. It was the first thing that popped into his head. It probably sounded stupid, because they only just got here a day ago. “I don't know if the last couple of weeks meant anything to you, or if they meant the same as they did to me, but... Is there any chance, that this could become something more?”

She looked at him. 

“It meant something, of course it did,” she said. “I just...”

Steve felt exposed, sitting there with his heart on his sleeve. 

“It complicates things,” she said. 

“When are things ever not complicated? Life is complicated.”

“I try to keep my life as uncomplicated as possible.” 

“How's that working out for you?”

She smiled a little, but she still looked sad, he thought. She was going to turn him down.

“I really like you,” he said. “I want to give it, us, a chance.”

She looked down at her knees a moment.

“This is going to sound really harsh,” she said then, “and I don't want to be, but are you sure you aren't confusing lust with some other emotion?”

He was thrown by that for a second. 

“Yes, I'm sure,” he said. “You think that's all it's about?”

“I don't know.”

He held her gaze. “That's not it,” he said. “I mean, it's a part of it, it's not that I don't like... I like being with you...”

The corners of her mouth began to curl upwards, until she was smiling. 

“You're so cute when you're embarrassed,” she said. 

He smiled too. He was more than happy to give her that. 

She got up and walked the few feet over to him. Instead of sitting down next to him, she sat down sideways on his knee and angled her body towards him so that she could hug him. She buried her face against his shoulder. He put his arms around her and hugged her back. 

“I really like you too,” she said and it felt as if something soared in his chest, warm and light. 

They kissed and then Steve caressed the side of her face, pulled her hair back a little and looked at her. 

“We work together,” she said. “It could get...”

“Complicated, I know.”

She stroked his hair, then let her fingers rest against his neck. 

“But I'm willing to risk it,” he said. “If you are?”

She nodded. 

He stayed for a bit. They lay on her bed and kissed and talked. Nothing more than that, but that was more than enough. It was perfect. The bed was too small for two people to sleep comfortably in, though, and Steve wasn't exactly a small guy, so a little after midnight he went back to his own room.

He found it difficult to fall asleep with everything that bubbled inside. He should be focusing on other things, or rather not focus on anything and get some sleep, but all he could think about was Maria. Eventually he got his phone out and sent her a text. She was probably sleeping, but she could read it tomorrow.

_I can't sleep, I can't stop thinking about you._

His phone beeped just a short minute later.

_Can't sleep either. It's just you, you, you, you, you._

He smiled, the happy feeling inside him expanding, like a hot-air balloon.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve smiled at Maria at breakfast the next morning, got a smile in return and she quickly squeezed his hand. They didn't really need to discuss the whole being discreet thing; this was their place of work after all. 

In their spare time it was a whole other matter. They spent as much time together as they could. Talking, having sex. One memorable evening they took a shower together and had sex right there, Steve lifting her up against the wall and she wrapping her legs and arms around him. 

All in all, he felt happier than he could remember feeling in a long time. Despite the dire circumstances they were in, despite all the dangerous work they had to do. 

He spent one afternoon sparring with Natasha. Instead of the gym they chose to use a large empty room on one of the upper floors. The windows were big and let in a lot more light than the basement.

Natasha picked herself up from the floor in one, smooth movement after he'd thrown her off him.

“I'm doing you a huge favor right now, you know,” she said.

Steve looked at her questioningly. As good as she was, he had to hold back in order not to hurt her. So, if anything, it was more the other way around, in his opinion. 

“Being around you is pretty sickening at the moment,” she said and walked over to where she had left her water bottle. 

“What?”

She shot him a skeptical look. 

“You're so in love, you're practically floating around on a pink cloud. It's fairly annoying for other people.”

“Oh.” He hadn't known it was that apparent. “Right.”

Nat smiled. “But I'm happy for you, for you both. It's a good thing.” She looked at him with a kind of soft look on her face.

“Yeah, yeah it is.” He smiled. 

“I'm sure there's a double bed somewhere, that we can dig up. So you won't have to settle for the shower.”

Jesus Christ. Steve felt his face go hot. 

“Okay, this conversation is over,” he said. 

She knew about that? Had she heard them? Did everyone know? Steve didn't find that funny, he found it pretty mortifying. 

**

The largest part of the op they were running were information gathering. Steve's initial opinion, that what they had on Ross wasn't enough, seemed to be the consensus. What they had was mostly about past sins and people bounced back from those all the time. 

Tony reported that Ross suffered from multiple personalities. On one hand he despised enhanced individuals and wanted them all locked up or killed, on the other hand he got off on the very idea and hadn't given up on creating more, which he should then control. It was what made him so conflicted and a bit of an ass.

Ross did of course not actually have multiple personalities, and Tony's choice of words aside, it was exactly this that they needed to focus on. His personal interest and investment, that bordered on obsession. They had to get more information about his current plans, the ones he didn't talk about in public speeches. 

“Basically, what he wants is his own Winter Soldier,” Maria said. “Preferably a lot of them.”

They were sitting on the couches in what had once been the reception. Someone, possibly Tony on one of his infrequent visits here, had turned the reception desk into a bar. There wasn't a lot of time, or inclination, for anyone to throw parties though. 

There were a couple of wine glasses on the table in front of them, nothing else. 

“And no competition,” Bruce said. “No one with the power to oppose him.”

“Precisely,” Maria said.

She was sitting next to Steve. He could faintly feel her body heat against his side, although they weren't touching. On his other side was Nat, sitting with her feet on the edge of the table. 

“So who knows more and who's willing to talk?” he said. 

“There have been meetings,” Maria said. “Sam has gotten us a lot of photos of the attendants. And, as expected, there are divisions in the military that are very interested in these talks.”

“Ross was in the Army, right?” Steve said and looked at Maria.

“Yup. He's got a lot of friends there, still.”

“I have one or two, as well.”

“You're saying we're gonna get ourselves a mole?”

Steve met her gaze.

“That's actually a pretty good idea,” she said and Steve smiled.

“What is he promising them, though?” Bruce said. “If that is indeed his endgame, he hasn't been able to recreate the Super Soldier Serum, no one has since Erskine. No one has even come close!”

“That's not entirely true,” Steve said. “Zola did, or some version of it. And Howard Stark did, or got his hands on it somehow.”

And it had led to Howard's death. It got quiet. 

“Tony looked into that,” Bruce said after a moment. “There is no documentation whatsoever, no trace of Howard's research in that area.”

“Could Ross have managed to recreate it?” Steve asked.

“I doubt it,” Bruce said. “Truth is that we don't even know if Erskine's serum would have worked on anyone other than you. There's no comparable data, no other procedures with that particular formula.”

Steve took Maria's hand. He had been mindful that they remained professional, but even though the conversation right now was work-related, it was half past ten in the evening and they had actually all sat down here to drink a bit of wine and talk about something else for a while. 

“I'm gonna turn in,” Nat said. “Get back to work tomorrow.”

As Steve and Maria walked in the direction of the bedrooms she leaned into him a little.

“You're one of a kind,” she said. 

Steve turned his head and smiled at her. 

Nick arrived early the next morning. No one saw him arrive, which maybe, hopefully, said more about Nick's skills than the facility's security. 

Maria didn't know he was coming either, or she wouldn't have been wrestling Steve for a sandwich in the kitchen when he did. Suddenly he was just standing there, in his black clothes, having snuck up on them. 

Steve cleared his throat. “Um, hi.” He felt somewhat flustered.

“Hi,” Nick said. 

A couple of awkward seconds passed. Maybe they should explain.

“Um, we...” Steve began, but Nick interrupted him.

“Stop looking at me like that, I'm not her father.”

“I just thought we should tell you...”

“Yes, I am aware. I'm just blind in one eye.”

“Do you want a sandwich?” Maria said, which was a lot more funny than it should have been.

“I need you in the conference room,” Nick said and on his way out he added over his shoulder: “You can bring my sandwich.”

Steve and Maria started cleaning up in the kitchen. 

“Okay, we need to act like adults now,” she said. 

Steve agreed. 

**

The next morning Steve got into a car with Nat. The car had fake license plates and they had fake IDs, even the clothes they wore looked like clothes other people than the two of them would wear. 

Steve was driving and Nat was looking at her phone. 

“We should have seen Ross coming,” she said after a while.

The scenery outside the car windows was picturesque. Summer was in full bloom and the greenery surrounding them was lush. 

“I think that's the problem,” Steve said. “You never do.”

“Maybe history is just bound to repeat itself, over and over.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“Despite all evidence to the contrary?” She turned her head to look at him and he took his eyes off the road for a second.

“I get what you mean, sometimes it feels like you're fighting the same fight again and again. But I think it's a fight worth fighting. And things do change, too.”

Nat took a deep breath and it was quiet for a moment. 

“Have you thought about what you'd like to do, after? If we win this one?” she said.

“A lot of people seem to be asking me that.”

“Did Maria ask you that?”

“It has come up, but not in the sense you mean. I guess I don't really know.”

The drive took them the better part of a day. They avoided traffic cameras whenever they could, seeing as Steve was one of the most wanted people in the country, and they were lucky enough to not get pulled over by some random patrol car either. 

“You sure about this?” Nat said and looked out the windshield at the house.

They were in a quiet residential area. In the gardens lining the street were swing-sets and trampolines, well-kept flowerbeds and outdoor furniture. 

“I hope so,” Steve replied.

“But you have met him?”

“Once. But he was about six at the time.”

They'd done their research, of course. They'd read every file they could get their hands on, in an attempt to assess if this was a guy they could approach or not.

They got out of the car, Steve looked up and down the street but didn't see any movement. They'd driven all the way down to the end of the street and back again first and all the cars they had passed had been empty.

He walked up to the front porch, Nat following behind him, and rang the doorbell. Pretty soon they heard sounds behind the door, a woman's voice, but the words were unintelligible. The door swung open and a woman in her mid-seventies was looking questioningly at them.

“Mrs Phillips?” Steve asked.

“Yes?” 

She didn't recognize him from pictures in newspapers or from TV, it was obvious in the way she looked nonplussed as to why there were two strangers on her front porch. 

“We're looking for your husband, is he home?”

“Yes.”

She didn't move, though. Steve was just about to open his mouth and explain who he was, when a man showed up behind her in the doorway.

“General Phillips?” Steve said.

Almost at the same time Mrs Phillips exclaimed:

“Oh my god.”

General Phillips recognized him too. 

“You better come in,” he said. 

Both Steve and Nat glanced behind them, to see if there were any people looking out the windows on the opposite side of the street, but saw nothing. 

Chester Phillips Jr. looked a lot like his father. He shook Steve's hand.

“Captain Rogers,” he said. 

“Sir.”

Steve shook hands with Mrs Phillips too. 

“I didn't recognize you at first,” she said and smiled a little nervously. “It's the beard, I think.”

“Sorry to be barging in like this. This is Natasha.”

Natasha greeted the Phillips as well and then they were showed into the living room. It was decorated in pastel pink and turquoise. Steve knew, because there had been times when he'd had nothing better to do than to watch home decorating shows on TV, that it was unfashionable. There were a lot of photographs, family photos of children and couples. Steve recognized Colonel Phillips in a black and white wedding photo, taken years before Steve knew him. 

“I knew your father,” Steve said. “And I actually met you, once.”

“I remember,” General Phillips said. “I got to meet Captain America, it was a big day for me.”

Steve smiled a little. 

“Can I offer you anything?” Mrs Phillips said. “Some coffee? We have tea, too.”

“Coffee would be great, thanks.”

Both Steve and Natasha were seated on the oversized couch, General Phillips in one of the armchairs.

“I realize I'm putting you at risk by coming here,” Steve said. “I wouldn't have if I'd had any other choice, but we need your help.”

“When you say 'we', I assume you don't mean just you and your friend here.”

“No.”

“Is this about the Accords?”

Steve nodded. 

“Ross has an agenda, that he's not so open about,” Nat said. 

“That figures, most people do,” Phillips said. 

Mrs Phillips brought the coffee and then Steve and Nat told them both about what they knew and what they suspected. 

“At the end of the day it's not about whether there is a team of Avengers or not,” Steve said. “It's about basic human rights, freedom and equality.”

“It's also about weapons, and who controls them,” Phillips said. 

“I'm not a weapon.”

Phillips smiled then and nodded at him. “Now, that's a really good punchline.”

Steve nodded a little. He felt relief. Phillips could just as well have called the police the minute he and Nat showed up. They'd taken a chance and it had paid off. Steve had thought it would, but he hadn't been sure.

They talked a bit more, with Steve explaining in more detail what they hoped Phillips could do. 

“I know some of these people,” Phillips said. “I can't suddenly jump on the bandwagon of wanting to create super-soldiers, though, I've made do with the regular kind throughout my entire career. That said, I can probably get a guy in the room, one way or the other.”

“If we fail it might be considered treason,” Steve said, because he felt he had to point that out.

Phillips nodded, his expression grave. He glanced at his wife who met his gaze. 

“Hell, I was thinking of retiring next year anyway,” he said.


	6. Chapter 6

“People keep asking me what I want to do after,” Steve said.

He was lying on his back on his bed, Maria more or less on top of him, her head resting against his chest. Her skin was warm against his.

It was getting close to midnight. Steve had opened the window to let in some fresh air and crickets were chirping outside. 

“Maybe they think you've had enough,” Maria said. “I mean, isn't that was this is all about, what we're doing now, having the right to choose.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I want to be an Avenger.”

“What are your qualifications?”

“I can wiggle my ears.”

“You're hired.”

She laughed. 

“My sister wants me to move back to Canton. Mom too. They keep asking me, 'When are you going to come back home?'”

“Do you want to?”

“No. You get used to living in a larger city. I miss New York.”

Steve slid his fingers across her shoulder. 

“I look forward to not having to stay in hiding,” he said. “If we ever manage that.”

“Maybe the fact that you're an outlaw is what drew me in, did you think about that?”

Steve chuckled. “No, I didn't.”

She lifted her head and looked at him. 

“We will manage that,” she said. “We have to.”

Steve met her gaze. He thought about Wakanda. As generous as T'Challa's offer was, it wasn't home. Steve dreamed of bringing Bucky home one day, not live in exile. And, even though he was probably getting ahead of things, he couldn't ask Maria to go with him to another continent. 

“I should get up,” she said. “I need to get some sleep.”

“You can sleep here, in the other bed.”

Steve didn't keep all his things on the extra bed. 

“Yeah, I could.” She sounded hesitant. 

“You don't have to. Do whatever you want.”

“No, I'll sleep here.”

They kissed each other goodnight and then Maria moved to the other bed. Steve looked at her a second before turning off the light. 

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

It was quiet for a beat.

“I think I love you.”

He could have cried, or laughed, or both. As it was, he just smiled in the dark, feeling those words envelope him.

“I love you,” he said. 

**

“Seen the paper today?” Clint asked. He was back at the facility since yesterday.

“No.” Steve looked at him.

“Consider this your head's up.”

The debate taking place in the media was rancorous. There were some really insightful pieces being written too, attempting to show different perspectives and be nuanced. Quite a lot of it was pure propaganda, though, and most likely it was orchestrated by Ross.

Since they were at a hidden location they obviously couldn't get a newspaper delivered. Steve looked it up online. When he found the right site, the first thing he saw was his own face staring back at him. As he read the article it became more and more difficult to push back the anger. He clenched his jaw.

The word 'vigilante' was used so many times it felt as if they were trying to hammer it into his head. There were speculation about what his ties to the Winter Soldier actually signified, meaning did he in fact agree with some, if not all, of the terrorist attacks and killings that the Winter Soldier was responsible for. On top of that they questioned his motives for every other single thing he'd ever done, flat out calling it a form of terrorism in itself, and painted a portrait of him as a deranged person with dangerous inclinations. 

He lost it. At least a little bit. Enough that he slammed the computer shut so hard it cracked. He got up from his seat, but there was nowhere to go, nothing he could do. He wanted to, he wanted to act. This whole thing was taking too long. They weren't getting anywhere!

He gripped the backseat of the chair.

“Steve.” Maria had come into the room. “Don't break the chair.”

He wasn't in the mood for jokes. Then again, she wasn't smiling.

“Have you seen it?” he asked.

“Yes.” 

Reading the article he'd felt betrayed. He'd always tried to do what was right and he'd made sacrifices in order to do that. He wasn't expecting undying gratitude and the world singing his laud, it wasn't about that, but that article was telling lies, using him to get a point across that was the exact opposite of what he believed in. 

“In time you'll get to say your piece,” Maria said. “They know we're planning something, that we're fighting back, and they're trying to discredit you.”

They'd used Bucky too. In a way that was even worse. Steve had at least made his own choices, been in charge of his own actions. 

Maria walked up to him and put her hands on his waist.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “But it doesn't matter.”

He looked at her.

“Everyone who knows you knows that it isn't the truth. Don't let it get to you.”

He'd thought her comment about how it didn't matter was odd, since it did matter, but it dawned on him then that she was trying to comfort him, make him feel better. 

“It does matter,” he said. He put his arms around her and pulled her close. “But thank you.”

**

Sam arrived one afternoon and seeing him felt pretty damn good. Steve gave him a hug.

“It's so good to see you, man,” Sam said. “Look at that beard. Wow.”

Steve laughed.

“Is Barnes all right?”

Steve nodded. In a way it was true. Bucky was safe and he wasn't suffering or being hunted. 

“He isn't here, though?” Sam said.

“No.”

They had a debriefing in the conference room and then, since dusk had begun to fall, they got started on dinner. They had a rota for cooking and cleaning. In a way it was much like in the Army. 

It wasn't Steve's turn to cook tonight, so he and Sam went outside to the balcony at the back of the building, with a beer each. The evening was peaceful. This far away from any cities there wasn't any light pollution and stars were already visible in the sky. 

“Did you and Tony work things out?” Sam asked, leaning against the banister. 

“We haven't really had a chance to talk. I'd like to think we're on somewhat good terms again. I made some mistakes. I guess it'll probably take some time.”

“He did come around, in the end.”

Steve leaned against the banister too and gazed out into the falling darkness. 

“I don't know,” he said. “I think maybe it kind of blew up in his face.” He sighed. “I didn't wish for that. You know, they weren't being honest with us, with any of us.” He turned his head and looked at Sam. “Have you talked to Scott?”

“Yeah, briefly. He's all right, laying low. He mentioned some other guy, maybe you know of him, he used to work for S.H.I.E.L.D, Hank Pym?”

“I've heard of him.”

“Anyway, this Pym resigned from S.H.I.E.L.D over a dispute about who the Ant-Man suit belonged to, who owned the tech and so on. And he's willing to speak out, on our side. I said I'd pass it on.”

Steve nodded. 

“There isn't going to be a big fight, this time, right?” Sam said.

“Not the kind you punch your way out of anyway. At least that's the plan.” Steve smiled a little. “Who knows?”

They both turned around at the hissing sound of the glass door sliding open. It was Maria.

“There you are,” she said. “I was just going to ask if anyone is allergic to hazelnuts?”

She looked at Sam.

“Not that I know of,” he said. 

She smiled and glanced at Steve and he looked back at her. 

“Um... what did I miss?” Sam said, a small smile starting to spread across his face. 

Maria's smile was so sweet. Steve put his arm around her.

“I don't see you for, like, a couple of months and that's when all the exciting things happen?” Sam said. 

“Well...” Steve shrugged a little, still smiling. 

It was a new, but pleasant, experience telling people she was his girlfriend. He had a girlfriend. It was almost bizarre. 

“Congratulations, you two,” Sam said. “That's awesome.”

“I should get back, report on the hazelnuts,” Maria said. 

“Really, I'm happy for you,” Sam said when she had left.

“Thanks.”

“You're happy too, I presume?”

Steve nodded. “Yeah.”

“You look it.”

Steve smiled. It was strange to think that he had actually known Maria for four years. He hadn't know her well, but he met her the first time on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier, prior to the Chitauri invasion in New York. How could he have known her all that time, without seeing what he was seeing now?

**

General Phillips came through. Steve didn't meet with him personally to pick up the intel, it was safer for Phillips that he didn't, but he sent his regards and gratitude via the agent who did. Hopefully he'd get a chance to talk to Phillips again at a later time. 

They had audio recordings, whoever Phillips had sent had managed to record several hours of both official meetings and conversations that took place during coffee breaks. Both were equally enlightening and disturbing. There were talks about identifying and containing individuals with special abilities, restricting laws that would not only secure that inventions and technology with the capacity to strengthen and give abilities to one or more individuals automatically became the property of the US government, but enhanced individuals themselves would be classified as 'assets' or 'threats'. Serve or go to prison. 

The good news were that they hadn't actually been able to recreate the Super Soldier Serum, although there were plans to reopen the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project. The main issue, put forward by Ross himself, was the question of how these soldiers would then be controlled. They did not wish for any more obstinate, self-proclaimed heroes running amok. Words most likely spoken, Steve thought, with him in mind. 

An audio to text program was transcribing the recordings. They were going to reach out to journalists that they trusted at major newspapers all over the country. Dumping it all on the Internet would have made it just as public, but they wanted a proper spearhead. They'd make the original records available too.

“We have to play this right,” Nick said as they were gathered around the table in the conference room. “This is not some shady organization with its roots in Nazi Germany, this is the Secretary of State, a man who's respected by a lot of people.”

“We have to sway public opinion,” Maria said. “People are afraid and Ross is playing on that fear.”

“This is where a lot of it is going to land on you, Cap,” Nick said. 

“I'll give a speech,” Steve said.

“That's the idea, but we need to think a little further than that.”

“What do you mean?”

Steve heard the faint whir of helicopter rotors then. 

“That'll be our reinforcements,” Nick said. 

A moment later Tony walked into the room. 

“Hi everybody,” he said. “I have an entire PR department, who incidentally hate me, but I only brought the best.”

Behind him was Pepper. Steve's first thought, or rather question, was if they were back together. He hoped so. In many ways Tony, despite keeping up appearances of the opposite, was just as lonely as many of the rest of them. It had taken Steve some time before he realized that. No one should be alone. 

“Hi,” Pepper said and smiled. 

Steve was at the head of the table, just a few feet away from her, and he got up from his seat. He wasn't sure what her opinion was of him. She could thoroughly dislike him, after what had happened between him and Tony, assuming Tony had told her about it, but she was here and there were no hard feelings on his part. 

“Hi Pepper,” he said and held out his hand. 

She smiled. “Hi.” She shook his hand. 

“Don't steal my girlfriend,” Tony said and Steve smiled. He felt relief, gratitude even, and maybe for the first time, actual belief that their friendship could be mended. 

While Pepper wasn't technically a PR-agent, she had a lot of experience in dealing with the press, and she was an extraordinarily levelheaded and smart woman. 

“There has been what I would call a smear campaign going on for a while, and while Ross is behind a lot of it, exerting influence where he can, it's important to remember that not all of it is his doing.” She glanced around the table. She had all of their attention. “A lot of it has been focused on you, Steve. I think that's partly because you are the main figure, a leader, in the opposition, but it's probably also because they are anticipating our move, which is to put you at the front of our counter attack.”

Steve nodded. 

“Basically what we have to do,” Pepper went on, “is to make sure they have as little ammo as possible.”

“Does anyone else think that the military lingo is a little out of character?” Tony said. 

Pepper ignored him.

“Luckily,” she said to Steve, “you don't have many skeletons in your closet, there haven't been a great many scandals. Unlike for some people. If you do have things that would maybe look bad, however, or that could be twisted to look bad, you need to tell us.”

Steve took a deep breath. “I don't think so,” he said. “I mean, it's all pretty much out there. They're already twisting everything I've done.”

“Okay.”

“Just so you know, it doesn't make you a boring person. Okay, it does, but you shouldn't feel bad about it,” Tony said.

Steve met his gaze across the table. Tony had that annoying, feigned innocent look on his face. It felt good to see. Steve smiled. 

“They've tried to portray you as a madman, with all the characteristic traits of such a person,” Nick said. “They want to make you the 'other', the unknown that people fear.”

“I hate to say it,” Bruce said, “but it's very effective, because it plays right into what Ross' wants to do with the Accords and how he wants to make people agree with his ideas.”

“It also means he's putting all his eggs in one basket,” Maria said. 

“And we're going to counter it,” Pepper said. She turned to Steve. “You need to appear as ordinary as possible, as non-threatening as possible. We have to refute the image of you that have been propagated in the media lately.”

Steve looked at her. He didn't know how to do that. He only knew how to be himself and that's all he wanted to be, it was all he should have to be. 

“People who run for office, or aspire to high positions do this all the time,” Pepper said. “There is almost like a check-list, what constitutes a respectable person. No scandals, is one. Traits that people can relate to is another; normal, wholesome hobbies, a stable background, a family.”

“I grew up in the 1920s and 30s, there's not a whole lot of people around who can relate to that anymore,” Steve said. “And I don't have a family.”

He was starting to get irritated. He was prepared to stand up for what he believed in, he was willing to be the face and voice of those who weren't in a position to speak out themselves, but this was starting to sound a whole lot like the things Senator Brandt had said to him during the war. Be a symbol, but there wasn't a lot of substance or honesty in it. 

“I hate to say it, but a single man in his late twenties to early thirties, whose extensive experience of violence is the most publicly known fact about him, isn't very trustworthy to the average person.”

“He's not single,” Nick said.

“Come on!” Steve said. 

“I'm sorry, I didn't know that,” Pepper said. 

“Maybe we should be focusing on the positive aspects, like the fact that Steve isn't a lunatic?” Bruce said.

“You're not thinking of getting hitched?” Tony said.

Steve glared at him. 

“That would be beneficial, actually,” Pepper said.

“This is propaganda,” Steve said. “The idea is to tell the truth and expose Ross.”

The discussion was getting way too personal. He was used to almost every single detail about him, everything from the loss of his parents to his weight, being public knowledge. There were even personal belongings of his in museums, as if they'd never truly been his, but instead belonged to an idea, belonging to everybody. But he was a person and he had been trying to build a life for himself again, starting from nothing. 

And Maria was sitting right there. He almost didn't want to look at her. 

“Sadly,” Pepper said, “the truth isn't always enough. Especially if people aren't prepared to listen.”

It was difficult to be angry with her. She was pleasant, respectful and she was only sharing her expertise. Steve wasn't angry with her. He was angry with the whole situation, and possibly a few other people in this room. 

He glanced at Maria and she met his gaze, looking at least partially as awkward as he felt. 

“There are other things to consider as well,” Pepper said, “when doing a public appearance. Clothes. What words you use.”

The discussion continued for a while longer and then they adjourned, with Steve in a bad mood. 

Maria came and found him in the gym a little later. 

“Hey,” she said. 

He stopped hitting the punchbag. 

“I'm sorry, about all of that,” he said. 

She shrugged a little and put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “It's all right.”

“No, it isn't. I didn't want you to get pulled into the discussion like that.”

“I'm the one who said it might get complicated.”

It hadn't, up until now. 

“It's not that I don't want to marry you,” Steve said, because he felt it was something he had to make clear. “I mean, I know it's not something we've discussed, but... Well, that's the point.”

Maria nodded a little. 

“It's a bit soon,” she said, sounding slightly sardonic. “But we could, couldn't we?”

Steve frowned. “Did Nick tell you to say that?”

Maria frowned back. “You know, there are limits to what he can, and would, order me to do.”

Steve reminded himself that it wasn't her he was angry with. 

“It should be for the right reasons,” he said. “When or if we ever decide to do that.”

“Yeah.”

He looked at her.

“I didn't mean to hurt you. If...”

“Steve, you are not obliged to tell me what you think I want to hear right now. I don't want you to. And I'm not hurt that you don't want to marry me. It's not something I carry secret hopes for.”

He could sense a slight condescending tone in there. 

“You sound angry,” he said. 

“Well, I find the idea that you would be prepared to marry me, because you think it's what I want, a little offensive. That you'd look at it as another duty.”

“That is not how I look at it.”

“Up there they talked about how it would be for the greater good if you could consider getting married. With emphasis on you. But what about me, I'd be marrying Captain America. And as sweet as you are, there are things about you that are so very much out of the ordinary.”

“I said no. And in Pepper's defense, she didn't know about you and me.”

He couldn't pretend it didn't hurt that she pointed out that he was different. Even though she was only saying out loud what he already knew. 

“It doesn't matter,” she said. “Even if I hadn't been in the room...”

It got quiet. Steve stared down at the floor for a moment. It was frustrating, and terribly unfair, that his personal life, his relationship with Maria, was affected this way. 

“I can't change who I am,” he said then. “But I do want to be with you. Now, and in the long run.”

Maria took a step closer and put her arms around him, leaned her face against his chest. 

“I want that too, I'm just scared,” she said. 

He stroked her hair and her back, then held her close. 

“This is not how I pictured a possible conversation about marriage,” he said. 

He thought she smiled, it felt as if she did.

“Me neither,” she said. “How did you picture it?”

“Well, not in a gym, for starters. And maybe me on one knee, and there would be a ring involved.”

She laughed a little. “You're such a romantic.”

“There's nothing wrong with that.”

“No, there isn't.”


	7. Chapter 7

They returned to the subject of marriage later. Maybe the genie had been let out of the bottle and they simply couldn't avoid it. It sure had stayed on Steve's mind.

“Does it really make any difference, in regard to public opinion?” he said.

“Well, sadly we live in a society where simply proving you're not gay has an impact on what people think of you,” Maria replied. She was playing solitaire on the coffee table. 

He leaned back against the backrest of the couch. It groaned a little under his weight and he stopped pressing his shoulders against the cushions.

“I'm game if you are,” he said then. “And not because I consider it a duty, but because I love you and marriage is important to me. Maybe that's old-fashioned, I don't know.”

She looked at him. “You're ready and willing to spend the rest of your life with me?”

He swallowed, then sat up straight. He put his elbows on his knees.

“We haven't talked about it,” he said, “but I don't age normally.”

She nodded a little. “I know.”

“Of course no one knows for sure, but chances are that unless something unforeseen happens, which it very well might, I could live for a very long time.”

A cold, clammy feeling pressed against his ribs, as it often did whenever he thought about this. What were the prospects? A hundred years, two hundred? More?

“You want my permission, up front, to remarry?” Maria said.

“No. I want you to know about it and I want to know if you're comfortable with that aspect of me.”

She scratched a spot on her forehead. “What do you want me to say? It's weird. The idea that twenty, thirty years from now I will have aged considerably and you will most likely look exactly the same. But I'd say it'll be worse for you than for me.”

Steve shook his head. “No,” he said. “It won't be.”

She looked at him and her expression was soft, then she got up and sat down next to him. 

“I can't promise that I won't ever freak out,” she said. “When I start to go gray or when women a third my age check you out... Honestly, it's difficult to imagine what that'll be like.”

She caressed his hair and then his cheek.

“But it's not something that would keep me from marrying you,” she said. 

They looked at each other. 

“Are we really doing this?” Steve said. 

“Looks as if we are.” She smiled. 

“You're saying yes?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

He smiled too. “This wasn't a very good proposal.”

“You did all right. You get an A plus for sincerity and for being gorgeous.”

He laughed. 

They were sitting close to each other and he thought he would never get tired of looking at her. He touched her cheek. She was so beautiful, everything about her was, but he loved her smile most of all. 

**

Steve wanted to get married in a church and he wasn't willing to compromise on that. Maria was fine with either. So the only problem was to find a pastor who wouldn't turn them in to the authorities. 

He thought of how strange it was that he'd gone from wanting nothing more than to serve and be a soldier, to be where he was today. It wasn't just that the times had changed, or that he no longer had the kind of working relationship that he'd had with Colonel Phillips, Peggy and Howard. Maybe it had more to do with him, with getting older and a little less naïve. 

He felt a pang of guilt as they pulled up outside the church. He was a fugitive and by marrying Maria he would make her one too. Right now she could still walk away, go back to a normal, safer life. But then he realized that if he would say any of that out loud to her, she would glower at him. 

Sam turned around in the driver's seat and looked at them. “You guys ready?” 

Steve felt nervous, half-convinced, even as they stood in front of the altar, that Maria would turn to look at him in disbelief and horror, and run. But she didn't and when they kissed after the ceremony, as husband and wife, he felt as if he could cry. 

Nat did cry, or at least her eyes were shiny as she smiled at them. They hugged her and they hugged Sam. 

Steve shook hands with the pastor. “Thank you,” he said.

The pastor smiled. “It's a bit like being in a Western, to tell you the truth. Best of luck to you both now.”

They stopped on the steps outside the church and Sam and Nat both took pictures of them with their phones. It was an overcast day, rain on the horizon, but Steve felt as if the sun was shining on him. 

“Sorry, I'm not a great photographer,” Sam said, frowning at the screen of his phone.

“What are you talking about?” Nat said. “You spent weeks taking photos.”

“The subjects weren't exactly posing.”

“So street photographer, then. Come on, Steve, lift her up.”

Steve looked at Maria who smiled at him, so he picked her up and held her with one arm under her knees and one under her back. 

“You gotta have a crazy one too,” Nat said then. 

“That wasn't the crazy one?” Steve asked and he wondered a little bit about Nat's apparent expertise on the matter of weddings. But then she was a well of knowledge, on all kinds of matters.

“I'm a little concerned,” she said, “given the things you can do, that you'd think that would qualify as a crazy pose.”

“Do you want to?” Steve asked Maria.

“Yeah, but what are we gonna do?”

He laughed. “I don't know.”

In the end he held her over his head on raised arms, as she balanced on her front. He saw later, in the photo, that they looked silly and happy, and Maria, in her outstretched pose, looked like a ballerina. He'd shaved that morning and felt as if he looked more like himself again.

There wasn't much opportunity for a party afterward, but they opened a bottle of champagne at the facility and were toasted by their friends. Maria would have liked to have had her family there, she had told him, and he would have liked for Bucky to be there. He was in no way displeased with having Sam as his best man, but Bucky was family to him. He wondered when, or even if, he'd get a chance to tell Bucky that he'd gotten married. 

**

They released the information on a Monday morning. Tucked away as they were up in the mountains, the reactions seemed distant, even though it was talked about non-stop on virtually every TV channel and social media erupted like a volcano. 

Steve watched some of it. It was out there now, Ross' past, the plans he had. Already key public figures were backtracking as fast as they could, trying to save their careers. Steve felt a grim kind of satisfaction, but also a nagging suspicion that this was only the beginning.

The team called to a press conference the next day, at a location in central Washington D.C. They flew there covertly and then a lot of strings had to be pulled in order to allow Steve to leave the safe house, without getting arrested on sight.

It turned out enough people wanted to hear what he had to say, after yesterday's exposure, and the order for his arrest would be held temporarily. 

“It's as safe as we're gonna get,” Nat said. 

“I've dealt with less safe,” Steve replied. 

A lot of representatives from the press had gathered, both domestic and international. There was a restless murmur of people in the room, just beyond the partitioning where Steve was waiting, the air crackling with anticipation. 

He turned to Maria. 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “It's just that I've had a top secret job my entire adult life, everything has been classified, so getting up on a stage in front of the entire nation is a bit nerve-racking.”

He squeezed her hand. “It'll be fine.”

He thought of when he got up on a stage as Captain America the first time. He'd felt nearly sick to his stomach, even though far less had been at stake then. He didn't feel sick now. He felt determined. Worried, perhaps, that this wouldn't be enough. The strengths he'd been given by the serum – he couldn't rely on them now. It was just him. As scrutinized as he'd felt in the past, he had the sense that he was about to allow himself to be seen, truly seen, for the first time. 

At the appointed time he walked out on stage, Maria following closely behind. He wasn't wearing a uniform, but a suit. He wasn't here as a soldier, at least not primarily, but as a man. 

He'd been warned that the reporters might start clamoring for answers the second he walked on stage, firing off questions at him all at the same time, but they didn't. It went quiet. Numerous pairs of eyes were fixed on him, recorders and cameras turned in his direction. 

“My name is Steve Rogers...”

He had thought about what he was going to say, although he hadn't written it down. He didn't do well with rehearsed speeches. And when he stood there, despite all the discussions about what impression he should make, he spoke from his heart, the words his own. He couldn't have done it any other way if he had tried. 

He ended the speech with what General Phillips had pointed out would make a great punchline.

“I am not a weapon.”

When he had finished there was silence for a second, perhaps even shorter, then the whole room erupted with voices. He heard fragments of it, people calling his name, Captain Rogers and Captain America by turns. But he wasn't going to take any questions, not today. 

Maria smiled a little at him and they left the stage together, then they were rushed back to the safe house. 

“You did good,” she said in the car. “You're a good speaker.”

He had mentioned her in his speech, only briefly, and referred to her as 'my wife', which had felt strange and huge, both at the same time. His wife. She had called her mother and sister, shortly before the press conference, so that they wouldn't have to find out about it from the news. 

Back at the safe house it was hectic. Lots of phone calls. The TV was on and Steve caught glimpses of himself up on the stage. He got a chance to watch Tony's speech too, which had been prerecorded at his house, as to not expose his double game prematurely. 

He talked, amazingly, not about himself, but about this kid he knew. “A great kid. Top grades. Maybe wants to be an engineer when he grows up. Oh, and he can do some amazing things that you and I cannot do. There's a lot of things I cannot do, give birth for example, or dance the foxtrot.” Tony ended his speech with “He is not a weapon.”

Steve felt proud of him, of how they stood together. 

Maria sat down on a rickety chair and hitched up her skirt a little to remove her thigh-holster.

Steve raised his eyebrows. “You were armed?”

“Yes, well, since you weren't.”

Steve's phone buzzed. It was a text from T'Challa.

Congratulations, my friend. Give my regards to your beautiful wife.

**

The first real effect they achieved was that Ross was forced out of office. Steve learned of it early the next morning. He was still in bed, lying on a bare mattress, with his arm around Maria, when Nat poked her head through the door.

“Are you awake?” she asked in a low voice.

“Yeah.”

“Ross resigned.” Nat left again.

Steve had expected to feel more than he did. Maybe it was because the victory was far from won. Or maybe it was because even though Steve despised many of the things Ross had done, he had only met him in person on a few occasions and didn't have enough personal animosity towards the man to feel any malicious pleasure. The important thing was that Ross was no longer in a position to carry out his plans. There were still others who could, though.

“Do we know if it was voluntarily or if he was asked to, and if so by whom?” Maria said. She hadn't even opened her eyes. She was still wearing her clothes from yesterday, although her jacket was draped over a chair beside the bed. 

“Let's find out.”

Steve kissed her cheek before he got out of bed. Part of him wished they could have stayed there. Sleep in. Make love. This wasn't exactly the honeymoon most people dreamed of, but they were together and to Steve that mattered most of all. Besides, he could picture the look on Maria's face if he were to suggest they should just take off. 

Hank Pym made a statement later that same day, forgoing his usual antipathy for participating in public forums. He, too, used the statement 'I am not a weapon' and soon thereafter, so did thousands of others. The hashtag #iamnotaweapon trended on social media. Steve saw it printed on T-shirts for the first time a couple of days later, on his way to a hearing. 

He had been granted amnesty, at least for now, allowing him to leave the house, but not the country.

“The phrase 'forced labor' is being used a lot, in regard to Ross' plans for enhanced individuals,” Maria said in the car, on their way to yet another meeting. She was looking at her phone. 

“That's what it would have been,” Steve replied. He thought of Bucky and in his heart of hearts he knew that he was, in part, doing this for him. All of it. Doing for others what he couldn't do for Bucky all those years. 

Of course The Winter Soldier had come up, in panel discussions on TV as well as the hearings Steve himself had participated in, in front of committees. It was inevitable; the parallel between what the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project had hoped to achieve and what HYDRA had managed to achieve was too obvious. Steve himself hadn't spoken much about Bucky, though. To spare him, maybe, even though Bucky had no idea all of this was going on. 

“It's a good thing,” Maria said, still looking at her phone. “The term has an indisputably negative connotation, there is no possible situation where anyone could mean it in a good way.”

Meaning people agreed with their side of things.

“Oh, my god...” She made a horrified face.

“What?”

She didn't want to show him at first, but then she handed him her phone. It was an article and the headline read 'Mrs America'. Below it was a picture of her, taken yesterday outside of Congress. The article itself consisted mainly of speculation, but the journalist had dug up some facts about where she was from and where she had gone to school. They'd found a high school yearbook photo of her and there was also another picture of her and Steve together, taken outside the hotel where they were staying. 

“It'll die down, eventually,” Steve said, sincerely hoping that it would. 

“Are you sure?” she said, as if she had a built-in bullshit detector. 

“I don't know. But these things almost always do, don't they?”

“Yeah...” She put her phone away. “At least it worked. The whole world knows you have a wife, that you're not some isolated weirdo.”

Steve looked at her. That hurt. 

She sighed. “I'm sorry.”

“Do you actually think that's the reason I...”

“No, of course not. I'm really sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Give me some time, okay? I need some time to adjust.”

It was a fair demand. Still, Steve couldn't help but to feel stung by her remark. 

“Steve...” She took his hand. “It was part of the plan, you know that, even if we made our own choice for our own reasons, too.”

“I know.” He squeezed her hand. “I know.”

They looked at each other. “We are making progress,” she said. “They are listening to us, to you. There will be amendments to the Accords.” She took a deep breath. “And when that work is done, we can go home. You and I.”

The car pulled up outside the large, white building. 

Steve nodded. He wasn't sure the work would ever be done, the world was changing so fast, but he knew her well enough by now to know she knew that as well. Hopefully they would get a chance to catch their breaths for a while. Go home, wherever they decided, or life decided, that should be. He wanted to spend more time with her, alone, without the eyes of the world upon them. And he wanted to see the life they could build together.

“I look forward to that.”

He really did.


End file.
